Vogt Award winners announced, with each earning a $20,000 grant

The Vogt Awards

The winners of the 2015 Vogt Invention & Innovation Awards were announced today by the Community Foundation of Louisville and Greater Louisville Inc.’s EnterpriseCorp. The awards take the form of $20,000 development grants, and are specifically for Louisville-area startup manufacturing and hardware firms.

The Vogt Awards invest in entrepreneurial startups that plan to spur economic growth and create jobs.

This year’s winners are:

Hue Innovations–This firm developed MiColor, which creates custom nail and gel polishes on demand for nail salons. The goal is to reduce wasted polish and increase customer satisfaction.

Inscope Medical Solutions–The startup developed a technology to improve intubation, with the goal of improving this procedure’s efficiency, safety and speed, while also lowering costs and saving lives.

Stinger Equipment–Stinger created the DL-22 dustless 22-inch saw, which not only safely cuts large blocks in a single pass, it reduces the chance of contracting lung cancer from silica dust.

Sunstrand–This firm seeks to decrease the weight of plastics and make them more eco-friendly, by supplying a bio-material for polymer composites.

TriBlue Engineering Corp.–TriBlue created a sour gas processing unit that allows natural gas processing plants to remove unwanted gasses, like H2S and CO2, from their lines.

The $20,000 grants will include participation in a 10-week Lean Start-Up course by Nucleus: Kentucky’s Life Sciences and Innovation Center. It also will include the appointment of professional mentors, as well as prototype development through the University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering. Winners also get access to GE Appliance’s Firstbuild Microfactory, U of L’s Rapid Prototyping Center, LVL1 Hackerspace, and the Louisville Mini Maker Faire.

Each winner will take part in Vogt Demo Day, on Nov. 17; at Demo Day they’ll not only make presentations to investors, but also compete for $100,000.

The Vogt Awards were launched via a $5 million endowment created by Henry V. Heuser Sr., founder of the Henry Vogt Machine Co. Heuser created the endowment in 1999, not long before his death.